Posted on by Aulia Maqvirah

ESSENTIAL POINTS IN HOW TO WRITE QUESTIONS EFFECTIVELY

ESSENTIAL POINTS IN HOW TO WRITE QUESTIONS EFFECTIVELY

“This post is written by Raffi Alfananda, Market Research & Business Development at PT Indonesia Research Institute Japan Jakarta, a global management consulting firm on business strategy.”

Surveys seem so simple, but they rarely are in reality. Slightly vary the categories of questions and response options in your survey, and you’ll seriously impact the standard and value of your survey’s results.

Bad results can result in bad decisions—the very thing you come into being to avoid by making a survey within the first place. Ask the incorrect questions, or ask them within the wrong way, and you may find yourself with products and services nobody wants.

Starting with an inventory of answers and turning them into survey questions will make sure you include all of the questions you wish, and word them during a way that may get effective answers. it’ll also prevent you from inflating your survey with questions that don’t matter.

 

 

 

Tips on writing a great survey or poll

  • Focus on asking closed-ended questions

Answering open-ended questions (also known as free-response questions) takes more effort and time than answering closed-ended questions. So, when considering how to write a great survey, you should limit the use of open-ended questions.

In general, when writing a survey, try not to ask more than two open-ended questions per survey or poll, and put them on a separate page at the end if possible. This way, even if a respondent drops out of the survey, you can still collect their responses from previous pages.

  • Keep your survey questions neutral

Including an opinion in your question prompt (or asking a “leading question”) can influence respondents to respond in a way that does not accurately reflect their true feelings.

Assume you posed the provocative question: “We believe our customer service representatives are absolutely fantastic.” “How fantastic do you think they are?”

  • Keep a balanced set of answer choices

Respondents require a method to provide honest and thoughtful feedback, which is related to our previous point. Otherwise, the credibility of their responses will be jeopardized.

Another potential source of bias is the answer choices you provide. Assume we asked respondents how helpful or unhelpful your customer service reps are and included the following as answer options:

  1. Extremely helpful

  2. Very helpful

  3. Helpful

You’ll notice that there’s no way for respondents to say the reps aren’t helpful. Writing good survey questions necessitates the use of an objective tone. This entails using a more balanced set of response options, such as the following:

  1. Very helpful

  2. Helpful

  3. Neither helpful nor unhelpful

  4. Unhelpful

  5. Very unhelpful

 

  • Don’t ask for two things at once

Confusing respondents is equally as bad as influencing their answers. In both cases, they’ll choose an answer that doesn’t reflect their true opinions and preferences.

A common culprit in causing confusion is the “double-barreled” question. It asks respondents to assess two different things at the same time. For example:

“How would you rate our customer service and product reliability?”

Customer service and product reliability are two separate topics. Including both in the same question can push the respondent to either evaluate one or to skip the question altogether.

Fortunately, there’s an easy fix here. Simply separate these two topics into their own closed-ended questions:

“How would you rate our customer service?”

And…

“How would you rate our product’s reliability?”

  • Keep your questions different from each other

Consider how you would react if you were asked the same question over and over again.

You’d probably be irritated, right?

Respondents may feel this way if you constantly ask the questions with the same type of questions or answer options. It causes respondents to either abandon your survey or, even worse, engaging the questions without much thought.

You can address this proactively by having different types of questions you ask, how you ask them, and spacing out questions that appear similar.

  •  Let most of your questions be optional to answer

Respondents may not know all of the answers to your questions. And there might be questions that they definitely do not want to answer.

Consider both of these factors when deciding which questions to require answers to. And when you’re unsure whether to make a certain question optional or required, lean on making it optional. Because forcing the respondents to answer your questions increases their likelihood of abandoning your survey or selecting an answer at random.

  • Try to practice it 

Prevent this from happening to you by distributing your survey to associates, friends, and so on. A fresh pair of eyes can be all that is required to spot errors in your survey.

Creating a good survey entails asking questions in a way that allows respondents to answer honestly. Simultaneously, it entails providing respondents with a quick and simple survey-taking experience.

Indonesia Research Institute Japan offers all services from desk research, in-depth interview, feasibility studies and market survey for better understanding of any topic that your company is interested in. 

For More Information and Services, please contact us:

Consulting Services info:

Hotline:  +6285718923842 

Email: contact@indonesiasoken.com

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    Authored by : Fitri Aulia | 22 December 2020

    Recent Property Development

    The Covid-19 pandemic has dealt a quite severe blow to the property business sector in 2020. During the PSBB period, business activities were very sluggish and it can be said that some business actors suffered severe losses.

    However, entering the new normal period, the economic activity in several sectors including property has begun to revive from the previous period. The role of the government triggers the revival of Indonesia’s property business activities.

     Government Stimulus

    The assistance provided by the government is in the form of subsidies or incentives for interest subsidies to debtors of public housing credit (KPR), which is contained in the Minister of Finance Regulation (PMK) Number 138 / PMK.05 / 2020 and amendments to PMK 85 / PMK.05 / 2020 regarding the guidelines for providing interest subsidies in the effort to implement the National Economic Recovery program.

    In early March 2020, the Government decided to increase the allocation of housing financing assistance by IDR 1.5 trillion for Low-Income Communities (MBR). This was stated by the Director General of Infrastructure Financing of the Ministry of Public Works and Public Housing (PUPR) Eko Djoeli Heripoerwanto in a webinar, Wednesday (29/7/2020).

    In addition, the Government also has Bank BTN as their partner-collaboration to implement their OMH Program aimed at Low-Income Communities (MBR) with low interest rates and low installments for the purchase of a prosperous tread house and a welfare apartment.

    Bank BTN noted, in 2015 they have provided housing financing assistance totaling 474,099 units. Then in 2016 as many as 595,540 units, in 2017 to 666,806 units, in 2018 to 755,093 units, and in 2019 to 735,749 units.

    As of September 2020, BTN has provided home ownership credit support (KPR) of 93,448 units which cost as much as Rp. 15.6 trillion. These support provided by BTN is significant for the survival of the business property sector.

    BTN commitment on supporting business property has not slackened. In fact, during the pandemic, BTN continuously provides support for the government program.The distribution of subsidized KPR is still a mainstay of BTN for the One Million Houses program.

     

    Source : Bank BTN (visit : https://www.btn.co.id/id/Conventional/Product-Links/Produk-BTN/Kredit-Konsumer/Pinjaman-Bangunan/KPR-BTN-Subsidi)

    Positive Trend in Q3  2020

    There is a positive trend during Q3 2020 after it drastically dropped earlier in the year, indicates there is potential for the revival of Commercial Property Demand in Q4 2020 and the next Q1 2021.

    Source : Bank Indonesia

    Hotels and convention halls are two sectors whose demand has risen quite drastically in the Q3 after falling badly in the previous quarter. This demonstrates positive potential for its development in the future. Meanwhile, the demand of apartment remains low and still struggles to revive until now.

    Growth of Commercial Property Demand in Jabodetabek

    Overall in Jabodetabek, the commercial property sector also experienced a positive increase during Q3 2020.

    In Jakarta, all commercial property demands show positivism with hotels being the most prominent in their development at Q3 2020. After previously shows a negative number, the total index in Q3 has at least increased to be positive.

    Source : Bank Indonesia

     Meanwhile, the growth in the total commercial property index jumped drastically in Bogor, Depok and Bekasi. Same case with Jakarta, its hotel sector are also the most prominent in reviving, at least in the Q3 2020.

    Source : Bank Indonesia

    As we can see on charts above, the hotel segment shows a great improvement in demand. This was driven by various kinds of promotions offered by hotels to adapt in this situation such as providing huge discount, staycation packages, working from hotels offer, and wedding reception packages.

    Why Hotels?

    As Indonesia gradually eases lockdown restrictions, the hotel occupancy rates across the country including Jakarta, have slowly started to pick up. However this is not without several efforts and sacrifices driven by people in the hotels sector to improve and revive the hospitality business sector in Indonesia.

    To get through this hard times, efficiency and innovation are the main keys. Therefore, there are several trends created specifically to adapt to this era. Hotels competing with each other to offer a flood of discounts. To further intensify its sales strategy, there are several e-commerce platforms that is becoming a  great place to advertise rooms and staycation packages, such as Traveloka. The Buy Now Stay Later also sticks to this trend.

    Hotels discounts on Traveloka (Source : Traveloka)

    Another new trend is the Work From Hotel (WFH). As you might know, the abbreviation of WFH was initially stands for Work From Home. To connect the dots, Working From Hotel then exist and created because there are more and more office workers are getting bored with the atmosphere of their house and desperate to look for a new atmosphere. It’s a trend where hotels prepare rooms, complete with equipment and facilities to work (e.g : Wi-Fi , stationer, and free printing facilities,etc).

    Source : Instagram @harrisfxsudirman and @arunasenggigi

    During the transitional PSBB period, indoor wedding receptions are allowed to be held again after previously was banned temporarily due to the massive increase of the Covid-19 spread. This becomes the opportunity that triggers the revival for the hotel business.

    However, this permission is also accompanied by the requirement to fulfill and comply with the health protocols made by the government. These includes the limitation of attendees to a maximum of 25 percent of normal capacity. Then, the seating distance for visitors is set at least 1.5 meters. Visitors are also prohibited from passing by or changing seats. The eating and drinking utensils must be sterilized, while the serving of food is prohibited from using a buffet. Last but not least, the wedding staffs are required to wear a mask, face shield and gloves.

    One of the breakthrough in this trend was the make of  “Virtual Wedding” ever since June 2020. As this was the case held by The Sunan Hotel Solo, which offer a virtual wedding service package for 44.5 million. The event is only attended by the couple and their family members, meanwhile guests are able to attend the wedding virtually through various platforms such as Zoom, YouTube, Facebook and Instagram, while enjoying food sent by the hotel to their residences.

                                                                                                              Source: The Sunan Hotels Solo

    Finally, we might conclude that the property business in Indonesia has the potential to develop more despite the massive impact it has taken from pandemic outburst. Combining the stakeholders effort and the government’s support to stimulate this sector are expected to help revive the business sector in the future.

     

    References

    Bank Indonesia. (2020). Perkembangan Properti Komersial (PPKOM).

    Kementerian Pekerjaan Umum dan Perumahan Rakyat. (2020, November 3). Tingkatkan Kepemilikan Hunian Layak, Realisasi Program Sejuta Rumah Hingga Akhir Oktober 2020 Capai 601.637 Unit. Retrieved from https://www.pu.go.id/berita/view/18970/tingkatkan-kepemilikan-hunian-layak-realisasi-program-sejuta-rumah-hingga-akhir-oktober-2020-capai-601-637-unit

    Kementerian Pekerjaan Umum dan Perumahan Rakyat . (2020, January 3). Capaian Pembangunan Rumah Tembus 1,25 Juta Unit. Retrieved from https://perumahan.pu.go.id/berita/view/227/capaian-pembangunan-rumah-tembus-1-25-juta-unit

    Kompas. (2020, July 29). Alokasi Tambahan Rp 1,5 Triliun untuk Perumahan Terkait 3 Program. Retrieved from https://properti.kompas.com/read/2020/07/29/191334021/alokasi-tambahan-rp-15-triliun-untuk-perumahan-terkait-3-program?page=all

    BUMN inc. (2020). Target Penyaluran KPR Bank BTN Naik Menjadi 300.000 Unit Per Tahun. Retrieved from http://bumninc.com/target-penyaluran-kpr-bank-btn-naik-menjadi-300-000-unit-per-tahun/?more=2